White Crow

By Marcus Sedgwick

When Rebecca swaps bustling cities for the quiet streets and countryside of Winterfold, she meets strangely psychological Ferelith and starts off a spooky chain of events. This novel follows three lives that intertwine themselves although they don’t know it at first. They each become strangely obsessed by the same questions…about death!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel as it was gripping and well written. The three main characters each share the narrative and this makes the book very interesting as you can see their personalities in each chapter. To add to this the book is set in two different eras which are centuries apart from each other. Yet, despite this the story manages to make sense (most of the time!) and the plot is deviously entrancing.

The narrative is triple as two characters (Rebecca and Ferelith) write in first person and this allows you discover more about their feelings and thoughts as well as seeing each step of their individual plans and questions. To add a sense of mystery there is a third character (who we don’t know the identity of) who also narrates the book but this time in third person. This is my favourite part as you can view the events as an onlooker and the section of narrative is not biased to one character or the other.

My favourite character in the novel was Ferelith as she was interesting yet had strangely spooky qualities. Her mind seemed somewhat twisted and she often thought outside the box or in a sense ‘differently’ to Rebecca and the other characters. However at times this book came across as too psychological as it often made you think and question what you thought was the truth.

Overall I liked reading this novel and I think that Sedgwick has written it very well showing great skill and accomplishment by creating two very different characters that are still linked in some way. I thought that the plot and structure of the book was very interesting and the book was unique as it was narrated by three different people. Despite this though, at times I found I was going round in circles when trying to decipher and discover which side of the questions I was on (it didn’t help that both characters were created with very strong opinions!). This factor didn’t stop me from thoroughly enjoying this book and I would encourage everyone to read it whether they are doing Carnegie or not!

By Jess, year 8